Basic HTML Version
26
WINTER
2012
When
Brigitte Khoury ‘84
arrived from
the US in 1997, she expected to become
a nine-to-five clinical psychologist with a
renowned reputation. It was, after all, the
typical career dream of most professionals.
It was the main reason she accepted AUB’s
offer to return to the country and join their
newly opened Psychiatry Department.
But all too soon, she realized that Leba-
non was severely trailing behind in its
mental health practices.
Khoury knew things had to change. And
the person initiating the change would
most likely be herself. The idea alone was
overwhelming. Could she possibly make
a difference?
If she had learned one thing during her
studies, it was that if there’s a will then
the sky is the limit.
And Khoury definitely had the will.
In 2004, she established the Lebanese
Psychological Association (LPA) which
gathered psychologists from all universi-
ties and the community psychologists .
Surprisingly, none existed beforehand.
“I was shocked to find out that anybody
with any degree can open a clinic and do
anything they want,” said Khoury. “We
really needed to organize the profession
of psychology.”
For the past eight years, LPA with the
support of the Ministry of Public Health
has been working on a law to establish
guidelines for the practice of psychology
in Lebanon.
Basically, it demands that qualified
professionals only (with a specific criteria
of education, hours of training, supervi-
sion and continuing education) be given a
license to practice.
It only recently received the approval of
the Ministry of Health and is currently
awaiting Parliament approval.
One of the requirements of the law calls
for a clinical training program for psy-
chologists. In 2010, she designed and
implemented an intensive program to fit
the needs of psychologists in Lebanon and
possibly across the Arab world under the
department of Psychiatry at AUB-MC.
Meanwhile, Khoury’s reputation grew
and she started traveling around the
globe giving lectures and taking part in
conferences. In 2009, the World Health
Organization selected her to be one of 30
experts worldwide to join their team in
revising the Mental Health Chapter in
the ICD10 to produce an ICD11.
(The ICD-10 is the 10th revision of the In-
ternational Statistical Classification of Dis-
eases and Related Health Problems (ICD),
a medical classification list by the World
Health Organization (WHO). It codes for
diseases, signs and symptoms, abnormal
findings, complaints, social circumstances,
and external causes of injury or diseases).
Khoury would be the only representative
from the Arab world.
It was an honor she couldn’t refuse. But
when she found out that the WHO was
The sky is the limit